staying alive
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Oikawa never had much. Now, all he had left was a dying dream, and his only hope for fulfilling it was that everyone deserved something from the world.


**A/N:** Written for the Digimon Bingo: the non-flash version, for number 125 - prompt: "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." Mark Twain.

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**staying alive**

What God thought it was alright to keep a guy alive when he didn't want to be? Who thought it amusing to strip away all purpose and leave him, a fish drying out under the heat of the sun with water far out of reach. He didn't like being a floundering fish; he despised it, but short of taking his own life there was nothing he could do to change it.

He tried…sometimes. But fear always clutched at his heart and stayed his hands. Haphazard scars knitted the skin of his wrists together – but they weren't deep. If he left them alone, they'd probably fade in a year or so – but he couldn't leave them. He scratched at them endlessly, until sticky fluid oozed out, and a tiny drop of blood. Then he bandaged them up so they didn't get infected and tugged long sleeves over them so no-body else stared. And a few days down the track, he'd do it all over again.

The rest of his time was spent in three activities: working, researching, and visiting Hiroki. Work was mundane, moreso now that there was little drive behind it. While he had always been interested in computers, databases filled with the numbers of every person in Tokyo paled in comparison to their work in realising the Digital World. He still did that: that was his research, long and dry now that there was no Hiroki to share it with – but he still tried, going even so far as to carry their lives' work to his grave and show them, despite the odd looks of bystanders.

But what did that all matter? Hiroki was gone. His dream was as far out of reach as it had been the moment they had lost contact with the Digital World – the moment Hiroki's father put his foot down and put an end to their hours in front of the television, with their friends.

If only he'd had a computer of his own…but he'd been an orphan, lucky enough to have a roof over his head he shared with nineteen other children, and the basic necessities: three square meals a day, clean water three times a week for a bath, and clean (if a size larger than necessary and worn) clothes. He'd been lucky enough to have a friend in Hiroki – because most could barely spare a passing glance at a child cast free to the world. He'd been lucky enough to have the Digital World at all.

Except he was selfish and wanted the Digital World forever, for real instead of just through a television screen that had vanished long ago. And he wanted Hiroki, even though they'd drifted apart a little once they'd grown, and more once Hiroki had made a family for himself: a wife, and a silent little child that made him wish his long-dead parents could arrange a marriage for him, or he could fall in love and ask for a woman's hand himself. But the only person he had ever loved was Hiroki, and Hiroki was dead: dead for a job that had nothing to do with him, protecting someone that had nothing to do with him.

His own job had been so he could get closer to the Digital World – but that wasn't so important now, because Hiroki couldn't share it with him. Life was far more lonely alone; he knew it, he'd known it ever since his days at the orphanage where he was an outcast even from others like him. He'd forgotten it in the time that he'd had Hiroki, and he'd remembered it all the more fiercely when he'd gone.

It wasn't fair. It shouldn't have to be that way – just like he shouldn't still be alive and wandering a haphazard path to the end while Hiroki's life had ended long ago. Hiroki shouldn't have even died at all; he had a wife and a young son, and he couldn't even do anything for them, because Hiroki's father was there as well.

Hiroki's family made him uncomfortable anyway. Because they were Hiroki's, and he'd had Hiroki too long to himself to be able to accept it. Maybe he'd had his life too long as well, because even if his dream was only half of what it used to be – or even less – he still persisted in it. Obsessed in it even, because it was all that remained of his happiness and he had a right to, at least, that.

He hoped that was why God chose to let him live, kept him afloat when he wanted to drown in the sea. Because it would be a very cruel God to let him go on otherwise, and the young child that had long since died in him refused to think God could be such a thing.


End file.
